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Humans have been imagining what it would be like to setup homesteads and live in space for about as long as they’ve been imagining how to get there, but the process didn’t really take off until after we actually got there.

Back in the 1970’s NASA dedicated some resources to the endeavor, and the results were the inspiration for untold numbers of sci-fi books and movies. Here’s a GeoBeats video that shows some of the fantastic concepts that NASA concocted along with a link to the Business Insider article upon which the video was based.

Of course, most of those fantastic visions bear no resemblance to reality, so far.

Luckily, we don’t have to just imagine what it would be like to live in space anymore, because there have been people living up on the International Space Station for quite awhile now. Thanks to National Geographic we can all get a sense of what it’s like up there because they made a great 360° video narrated by astronauts Chris Hadfield, Mae Jemison, Mike Massimino and Nicole Stott.

That’s what it’s like to live in space now, but there’s a new space race going on, and it’s led to a bevy of new visions for space habitats. For example, Bigelow Aerospace, who already helped add an expandable module to the International Space Station, has plans for “space hotels.” Here’s a CNN video that features a tour of a prototype.

Bigelow Aerospace’s visions don’t stop with space around the Earth — they also have plans to send their inflatables into orbit around the Moon!

It turns out that NASA is still in the business of envisioning space habitats, and there are some hot-off-the-press concepts of what it would be like to live on Mars. Just last week they announced the results of their 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, and here’s their promotional video that showcases the winning concepts.

You might think that spacesteading on Mars is as far out as it gets, but while it’s true that Mars is the farthest away anyone is planning to settle, it isn’t the only candidate for interplanetary settlement. There’s also a movement afoot to settle our nearest neighbor, Venus.

Better yet, NASA’s gone so far as to also envision a space station on Venus and created this awesome two minute 360° video to show how that would look.

So, while we may not be moving into huge space cities with artificial gravity any time soon, there are some awesome space habitats on real drawing boards.

If you’re still a bit bummed about the discrepancies between early visions current realities, then maybe you can at least get some solace by immersing yourself in the amazing fictional settlements that were clearly inspired by those early visions.